


set the fire to the third bar

by aquathenmarine



Category: EXO (Band), SHINee
Genre: Abandonment, Coming of Age, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Mental Instability, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 09:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11529492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquathenmarine/pseuds/aquathenmarine
Summary: Taemin and Jongin have always been childhood friends, but now that they're older they don't want to admit that they're being pulled in different directions. They hit a moment where they're neither going forward or backward, until a crash takes Taemin out of his body and he's forced to see what Jongin's been going through in his absence.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm importing all my past works onto ao3 for archiving purposes. This was originally posted around March 2015.

“This heater is like, magical you know,” Jongin says suddenly, in the silence that they’re both struggling to fill. Jongin grasps at anything to say right now, because every moment of silence between them makes the feeling of impending doom in his chest rise even further. He has to say something. If he lets that feeling take over, he’ll probably start crying or something equally as humiliating, and it’ll just make this whole goodbye business all the more difficult.

“If this story is your weird way of saying goodbye, then leave it,” Taemin says with a snort. His hair is sticking to his forehead instead of falling straight down to his shoulders with all its weight in the heat, but he refuses to move or ask to go inside where there’s air conditioning because he knows what it would mean to Jongin if they moved from the heater at a moment like this.

“Nah, it’s kinda interesting,” Jongin continues, ignoring the twist to his gut that Taemin’s words place. “My parents were both starving university students when they found it at a yard sale mid-winter. It was cheap as shit and really powerful, despite its age. It’s how they met. They were arguing over who would get it, even trying to get the seller to have a little auction, but eventually they made this weird system of sharing.” Taemin looks confused. “Like, one would have it for a few days, then they would swap. It was really weird, actually, now that I think about it. I guess it worked because they found out they lived in the same dorm at the same university. But it brought them together, and then they became friends.”

Taemin just keeps staring, skeptical. Jongin’s stomach flips. He can’t tell if it’s all in his head, but it’s at moments like this where he feels like he’s losing him. Like he has to wrack his brain for something funny or interesting to say, because they’re so different now and he can’t bare to think that anything has changed.

“How is it magical, though?” Taemin ponders. It’s been their tradition from about the beginning of time to sit, backs against the heater, earphones shared between them, and just pass the dull hours by after school or, nowadays, whenever they can. Taemin realises that this is the first time he’s actually bothered to ask why the heater was even still there after all these years in the first place.

“Well, Dad warmed his hands on the heater right before he proposed to Mom. ‘Cause he did it on the anniversary of their first meeting, which was in winter, and you know what he’s like when he’s nervous.” Taemin flashes a brief smile at the joint memories they have, that they both know the other is thinking of. There’s a tiny fanfare going off in Jongin’s mind somewhere.

“I mean, I guess it’s some sort of good luck charm more than anything,” Jongin continues. “It’s why we’ve kept it so long in this garage.”

“Well, it still works after all these years. Maybe it _is_ magical,” Taemin snorts.

But then the silence is back, and it sits between them like an ugly, heavy rock.

“I’m scared things are going to change,” Jongin whispers when it becomes too much in all of four seconds.

Taemin looks at him, but Jongin’s eyes are boring into the empty air right in front of him. Taemin reaches over for his hand, and even though it’s hot and sweaty and stuffy inside, he holds on tight.

“Don’t be,” he murmurs back. “We were always going to have to grow into our own selves, but this”—he holds their joined hands up, and Jongin follows the movement with his whole head, as though hypnotised—“is untouchable.”

He drops their hands to the floor, and their eyes meet instead. Taemin smiles a little, because in a way he thinks it’s cute that Jongin is so worried and affected by his going off to college.

Jongin’s already shaking his head, fluffy black hair shaking slightly with the movement. “You’ll forget me.”

“Oh, _please_ Jongin—“ Taemin is already looking away, rolling his eyes. Sometimes the one year age difference is painfully obvious, though Taemin is positive he wasn’t half as worrisome and cheesy as Jongin is when he was his age.

“ _No_ , you will,” Jongin insists. Taemin tries to protest again, but Jongin continues. “It’s the natural progression of things.” He sounds so hopeless. It’s like he’s accepted it all, and that’s what alarms Taemin into listening carefully. “There’s so many things neither of us have done yet, and I know you’ll do it all in college. You’ll laugh about it with other people. You won’t share it with me because I’m just the kid you left behind back home who doesn’t know anything about all that. That’s exactly what you’ll do, and it’ll seem natural because it is. You’ll leave me behind.”

And then—certainly, not for the first time—Taemin wants to say something cruel. He knows his mouth is twisted a certain way, though he’s trying to smother it before Jongin takes notice. Not that it matters, since Jongin is staring at his own hands now, almost in defeat.

Taemin doesn’t know if it would be a good idea to point out _who_ exactly abandoned who, in the grand scheme of things. Was it his fault that Jongin decided to give up nearly all the time he had for Taemin and replace it with dancing? In a way, there’s an irony because Taemin knows that if it wasn’t for Jongin practically leaving, he would not have had the curiosity or the boredom to find those old textbooks—the very ones lying in the boxes behind them in a corner of the garage, previously belonging to Jongin’s dad—and slowly start to develop dreams of his own.

And now he actually has a sense of direction now, and Jongin doesn’t seem to realise that it was he who pushed Taemin there in the first place.

 _Or_ , a tiny voice says in the back of Taemin’s head, which he chooses to ignore out of spite, probably, _you’re just pathetic and looking for an excuse to not have to face the fact that your whole fucking life revolves around Jongin Kim_.

But instead, he says nothing. He knows how delicate things are as they currently stand, and he knows he doesn’t have the courage to face any of the problems they have head on when things can break at any moment.

So he takes a quiet breath and lets it out. He still doesn’t look at Jongin, but he reaches down blindly for Jongin’s hand. He doesn’t find it.

“Maybe it is,” he says. Jongin doesn’t make a sound, but the air between them seems tense. Maybe it was always like this and Taemin is only just noticing it now. “The natural progression of things, I mean. But that doesn’t mean that _we_ have to change. You and I, as a-a _thing_ or whatever. Like a friendship thing. Brotherly thing. Yeah.” Taemin closes his eyes. He’s being so clumsy. It’s true that he isn’t really the eloquent one, but now for once he would like to say something profound. Or just comforting.

“This was always going to be the biggest thing we ever face, you know.” Jongin says after a while, quite calmly. “The fact that we’d eventually have to grow into our own people, go meet others and marry them and shit. But it was always going to be hard—hard for _us,_ I mean—because it’s not possible for anyone or anythi—“

But he breaks it off with a gasp, because of course that’s a lie. He wanted to finish with “it’s not possible for anyone or anything to get in between us”, but with a choking feeling they both realise at the same instant that although that may have been true a year or two ago, it wasn’t really anymore.

It lay between them, lighter than an outright lie, but too heavy to be sincere. It was that uncertainty, that lack of confidence in the foundation that held their friendship together, and with Jongin’s gasp it all comes crashing down around them and suddenly Jongin’s in tears.

“Jongin _no_ ,” Taemin starts to say immediately, but then cuts himself off from saying anything further. Instead, he leaps to Jongin’s side so he’s closer and even though it’s hot and both of them are sweaty and it feels _sticky_ and gross, he holds the boy to his chest and closes his eyes when he feels the elbows that belong to the arms, the embrace, he’s secretly missed digging into his stomach as he grabs the front of Taemin’s shirt.

“It seems that way but that’s not how it is, okay?” Taemin says through his own tears. “I know it’s been a little cold in here”—it sounds out of place in this weather but they both know exactly what he’s talking about—“but I _love you,_ alright? Yes, I fucking said it. If it needs to be said then I don’t mind, even if it’s embarrassing. But it’s _true_ and _nothing_ can change it, okay?”

Jongin’s sobs don’t take a pause.

“ _Okay,_ Jongin?” he insists again. His head is throbbing with the intensity of it all, but he pulls Jongin’s head up out from where it was tucked into his chest so they’re finally facing each other, eye to tearful eye.

Jongin’s eyes are red and scrunched up from trying to regain his composure. He wordlessly nods, until a soft sob wracks his frame. Taemin gets a sudden, unwarranted thought and in the split second it takes for the idea to form in his mind, he seizes and acts on it. Jongin takes the kiss with open eyes and a stiff mouth. When he feels Taemin’s hand brush down over his jaw, rubbing back and forth until he drops it against his palm, he takes the tongue into his mouth and feels it right down to his toes.

It goes on until Taemin has bent Jongin’s head too far back to taste anything new anymore, and ends with a slimy _plop_ and huge gulps of breath.

“There,” Taemin says, with a smirk that Jongin decides dazedly is one of great satisfaction. “I’ve obviously kissed someone before, but not made out like that. Now you’ve had my so-called first ‘first’ of maturity or whatever.” Taemin winks. His lips are red and swollen. _Shit was that me_ , Jongin thinks.

“Uh… okay,” is all he can think to say without fearing bumbling humiliation before he shoves the ear buds back into their ears.

It’s only when Jongin has come to a standstill in front of the arrivals door that he realises he has run out of something to distract himself with. The preparations are over, the actual driving and getting down to the airport is over. The music from the car’s stereo isn’t blasting out any thoughts in his mind before they can even form anymore, because he is, in fact, outside of the car, and all of a sudden he finds himself with nothing left to face but the gruelling _waiting_ that stands like great stone slabs between himself and what he came here for.

It’s too long, almost unbearable. But as soon as Jongin sees a flash of those eyes that he’s come to know so well throughout his life, the heavy burden of waiting and expectation disappears.

It’s not dramatic, because _everyone_ around them is acting as they are—smiling,  embracing without holding anything back, at least not for those first few moments of impact.

Jongin is too happy to pay too much attention to Taemin’s stiffness past the first instance of acknowledgement.

“So I got my drivers’ licence—“ Jongin starts, and then he starts to jabber away all the way to the car.

It’s freezing. Now that Taemin’s here again and Jongin isn’t so tense anymore with anticipation and he can actually _take his surroundings in_ without annoying heart palpitations from the nerves in the way, it hits him how cold it is and how maybe he should have prepared for that with a thicker coat or something.

“Shit, sorry, are you cold?” Jongin asks Taemin once they’ve settled into their seats, bags safely packed in the trunk and seat belts locking into place.

Taemin snorts. “Well,” is all he says, with some humour, and Jongin takes it as a queue to turn the heating on. He really should have warmed up the car properly before, but he had been too nervous to stay in his right mind all morning.

Taemin was coming back for the Christmas holidays. Only for a week, but it’s been _so_ long since they’ve seen each other that Jongin is thrilled with even this much.

“How have you been?” Taemin asks softly, after a few minutes on the road have passed by and Jongin has managed to manoeuvre out of the huge airport parking lot with success.

“I’ve been fine,” Jongin replies, flashing a smile over at Taemin, who only just returns it as Jongin is turning away. With his mind split up between thoughts of how they’re going to spend their one week, the road, and the boy beside him, it all comes out stilted. “Missed you. Worried over you. But I’ve been doing stuff too,” Jongin pipes up at the end. _How do you catch up in a week?_

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh. Got my licence, like I said. Won a few dance competitions, got a few contacts. It’s been a good term for me, I think. You?” _Maybe we should just go out and hang out instead of talking. We can talk online anytime anyway._

“Yeah, actually, same.” Taemin starts, and then out of nowhere enthusiasm colours his words and he starts talking almost as much as Jongin had been earlier, about his course, his new friends, the new challenges he’s had to face that he’s never even imagined he would have to— “Ever had to try and pay utility bills when you’ve wasted all your student loan on beer and really unnecessary memory storage hardware? It was a fucking _mess_ ”—the weather over there and how much he loves it all.

It’s a little overwhelming for Jongin and his heart drops at most of it, to be honest, and the rest of his thoughts scatter to the background. It looks like Taemin’s been doing perfectly fine without him. He latches onto a simpler subject. “New friends? Cool. Any, uh, girlfriends or whatever?”

Taemin snorts. “Or whatever is right,” he says. Jongin can’t think of a reply. The air stirs as Taemin’s ponytail whips around as he turns to look out the window.

“But it’s good to be back for Christmas,” Taemin continues without pause. “I wish I could stay longer, but my break is only four weeks long”—Jongin starts to feel ice in his chest—“and I’m spending most of it touring the East coast with some dorm mates. We’ve been planning it for a while so I guess I’m excited.” He lets out a soft laugh, and out of the corner of his eye Jongin can see his breath turn to fog in the cold.

“That’s really cool,” Jongin says. He doesn’t even try to hide his lack of enthusiasm. “Take lots of pictures.”

“I will,” Taemin says quietly. It’s silent after that.

The road stretches before them, a severe line of grey that is the road, flanked on both sides by an endless white expanse of snow and general middle-of-nowhere-ness. This airport is the nearest to their hometown, but it’s still a long drive and the monotony of the weather is going to ensure that the journey is endless and unbearable.

Jongin’s known all along, secretly, that it would probably end up being like this. It scares him, and he had hoped that maybe Taemin would come back unchanged, that when he came back everything would just pick up from where it left off, and they could continue their uncomplicated friendship like they had in the summer.

But the seed of pretence is so deeply-rooted between them now, he has to wonder—was that a sham too? Does Taemin already know that? Is it just Jongin that’s deluding himself into thinking things have been okay all this time?

“Listen, Jongin,” Taemin suddenly starts after about a half hour of silence has passed. Jongin sighs internally. _Here we go._

He doesn’t say anything, but it’s not like there’s anything else to be concentrating on, so Taemin goes on without waiting for Jongin.

“This distance was really a good thing, okay?” Jongin immediately starts to roll his eyes. He knows that he isn’t going to learn anything new here, because there are a lot of hidden truths that they’ve both been ignoring, but the difference with Jongin is that he just doesn’t want to hear it. He’s rolling his eyes but he knows it’s going to crush him.

 _Wouldn’t it be convenient,_ he thinks dryly to himself, _if we could just pick up a notebook of all the other’s thoughts, and everything would be out in the open without any room for misunderstandings ever again._

“It was,” Taemin continues. “It’s easy to just be caught up in everything when we’re both together and everything is just a daily routine that we’ve had for years and we’re all in that bubble and all that. But now that I’ve been out of it, I changed a lot, okay? I realise how wrong some things were.”

“Wrong? _”_ Jongin says. There’s a clear challenge colouring his voice, and it’s so low that it nearly blends in with the rumble of the engine. He indicates left and moves the car into the next lane. Traffic is starting to build up a bit and he really doesn’t need this right now.

“Yes, _wrong_ ,” Taemin replies coldly. “All that sneaking into each other’s beds in the middle of the night just because we could, spending every waking moment together, _bathing_ together. It’s cute when you’re kids, but we’re _adults_ now Jongin. We aren’t kids anymore and living like that is just childish and unnatural. Being that dependant on another person at our age isn’t _friendship_ , it’s delusion. And possibly some sort of anxiety disorder type shit as well.”

Jongin shoots a look of disbelief at Taemin.

“Eyes on the road.”

“Are you really fucking serious right now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well what the fuck do you think?”

“What do _I_ think? I think you’re being stupid. We were just being brothers.”

“Most siblings ignore each other for extended periods of time throughout the day. We used to spend every waking moment together. Weren’t you ever sick of it?”

Jongin flicks his eyes over at him with ice. “No. Don’t make something innocent weird.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Taemin scoffs and leans down to recline his seat back so he can avoid looking at Jongin anymore. He crosses his arms and looks out the window, well out of Jongin’s line of sight.

After a long moment, Taemin starts again quietly. “Sometimes I think you see something in me that isn’t even there.”

“Oh?” Jongin asks. He doesn’t sound very curious, but Taemin can see his white grip on the wheel.

Taemin stares at them for a long time before answering. Jongin never relaxes his hold, even when he signals and shifts into the next lane a second later.

“Do you? I just don’t understand why you have to make everything so difficult all the time.”

Jongin’s eyebrow flashes up for a moment, but his lips stay frozen in a tight line as he forces the words out. “Difficult? Am I smothering you? You leave for college and me wanting to still be friends with you is too much, is it?”

Jongin can hear Taemin scoff. His eyes flicker to the mirror but he can’t see his friend from the angle.

“You know that’s not it.”

“Then what,” Jongin forces out.

Taemin sits up again, and Jongin knows he’s scrutinising him. “You just make it so hard to get on with life, Jongin. Being friends is great and all but when it’s time for me to start making my own life without you, you get all angry and childish like this, like you _own_ me or something. It’s not fun anymore.”

“What the _fuck_ are you saying, Taemin?” Jongin finally yells. It’s more of an exasperated exclamation, but in the silence and the cold it rings a little too loud in their ears. “You’re turning this into something it’s not. We were always fine with the way things were, but if you found it weirder as you got older, you could just _say_ something like a normal person, and we could have just gone on with our lives normally. I mean, it’s stupid. If you don’t like me jumping into your bed in the winter because it’s cold, then whatever, I’ll stop doing it. But why are you making this into such a big deal? It’s like you spout all this random bitter crap and it just doesn’t make any sense.”

Taemin doesn’t reply. After a minute or two, Jongin chances a look over. Taemin stares back. His face is red and the vein in his forehead is throbbing. He looks like he wants to murder Jongin, but most of all, he just looks unspeakably sad.

“Fuck you,” he whispers. It sounds choked, and like he’s thought very carefully about whether he was going to say it or not. “You dropped me like it was nothing, ignored me and replaced me with a stupid ambition, which could have been fine. But instead you expected me to wait for you to come home, to stop everything so we could go on as before. In our tiny fucking town where there isn’t anyone our age for blocks I was left without a friend for years and then you got _angry_ at me because I didn’t waste my time sitting around any longer. You _knew_ I would be lonely. You _knew_ how hard it’s always been for me to make friends with other people. But I finally decided to do something else with my life, since you weren’t in it anymore. I got really into it, turned my grades around, my _life_ around, and you never congratulated me or cheered me on even though I went to all of your shows.”

Jongin stares openly now, eyes flitting back to the road every now and then, though it’s so monotonous that there’s really no point.

“You have no right to blame me for how this ended. You can’t just do what you want and then expect me to follow. I’m a person too, Jongin. I have a whole entire life but you never cared about anything I did unless it was about you.”

His hands have gone cold, and Jongin thinks in the very back of his mind that it’s a good thing the road is straight for miles, because he doesn’t think he can steer anymore.

“You don’t care about me anymore?” Jongin’s voice rises pathetically at the end, but he doesn’t care. “You never did, all this time? I just tried to make time for you despite how busy I was. That’s always how I thought of it.”

“And then you do that,” Taemin says instead. “You make me feel like I’m the cold one, like I didn’t always love you to death. I’m just tired, Jongin.”

“Of me?”

“Yes. Of you, and of how much you don’t understand me anymore.”

“And do you think you understand _me,_ Taemin?”

Taemin leans back in his chair, and rubs at his temples. Jongin thinks he could choke in the tension.

“I don’t know, Jonginnie. I don’t know if we ever understood each other.”

“That’s the problem with childhood friends, huh?” Jongin says in a monotone. “You don’t get to choose each other so much as you’re forced together due to circumstances. But I always thought that growing together meant we would _always_ understand each other.” Jongin doesn’t dare take another breath because his heart is beating fast and he doesn’t know if he can push the rising panic down.

Taemin laughs, but it blips against the silence like a tiny pulse and then falls quiet again. “Do we, Jonginnie? Do we really understand each other?”

_Do we really understand each other?_

It’s all over then, with Taemin’s last words and a crash and a burn.

Maybe if they hadn’t been hit by a skidding truck in the middle of nowhere, they would have gotten help sooner and it wouldn’t have quite ended like this.

Jongin is lucky to be alive, though he probably has no reason left to live, really. He’ll never dance again, and Taemin will probably never rise from the coma.

But there’s always the chance that he will, so eventually he picks himself up and collects his thoughts back into coherency and something slightly more devoid of pain and allows his body to heal.

Then his parents take him home two months later with a few freshly sawn-off casts, and they lay him gently on his own bed which already smells like a stranger’s, and that’s that. He’ll just have to recover at home.

He can’t bring himself to ask about Taemin, let alone visit him. He doesn’t want to return to the hospital again. They won’t let him leave the house anyway, in his  sensitive state. There are still some aches in his joints. What if he slips on ice? Anything could happen.

But it’s stifling after a week. He doesn’t feel like it, of course, but he notes at one point that he’s never gone without dancing for this long. He climbs out of bed once after deciding that he simply can’t accept the ban on dancing anymore, and lifts his arms up and points out a leg, but then before he can execute the movement he lets his leg fall and move forward. It’s like he isn’t controlling where his legs are taking him, but he’s felt so stifled for so long and that terrible feeling in his chest just won’t go away _ever_ and it’s always _choking_ him and now he’s thinking about it and it’s building up in his chest, ready to burst out unless he screams—

He’s running downstairs, stumbling with the hard, clumsy steps and then he’s outside, hard turn right, through the side door and into the garage.

The old heater stands as it always has, in the corner, looking forlorn and freezing and like unforgivingly cold metal when the red bars aren’t lit up. Jongin’s hands are shaking—from the cold, from _everything_ , he doesn’t know or care—as he approaches the heater.

No no, it really is very cold. It hits him and with something like manic desperation he crouches down and raises his hand to turn the bars up. At first the small knob doesn’t give from his lame push. Jongin loses his patience and jabs it all the way up to the third bar. It’s mostly an accident, and with a sudden quirk of a brow that feels unnatural in the cold stone of his face he realises that perhaps he should bring it down one. No one ever brings it up to third. It was old but it heated up incredibly fast and intensely, and the only times anyone has ever brought it up to third was his father the night he met Jongin’s mother, and the night he proposed to her. It’s a good luck charm.

Only bring it up to third when you need a little good luck.

“I don’t need luck,” Jongin tries to say, but there isn’t any sound. It’s been too long since he’s last spoken aloud, and the numbness still holds a grasp around his throat. “I just need him to wake up.”

He feels the welcoming heat as he collapses against it without grace. It seeps into his shirt, into his chest, and he starts to melt just enough for the first tears to escape. _Say something three times, and you’ll get it_. It’s in his dad’s voice, because the advice came from him. Oh who cares. Why not? What has he got to lose?

“Bring him back to me,” he whispers. There’s something stuck in his throat, and he feels like he might have to hyperventilate just to be able to breathe again. “Br-bring him back to me.” Jongin takes in a few more gasping breaths, tears streaming down freely now, but he tries to push through the hysteria just once more. “Bring him back to me. Please.” His throat catches on the last word, and then a sob rips from his chest and he can breath a little easier. And another, and another. Another. His back is warm but his chest has never felt this cold. It takes him thirty-four minutes to fall asleep from that moment.

When Jongin’s eyes next open, they’re in familiar but unexpected surroundings. He’s lying down in what he knows is his bed, and there’s a cool towel on the side of his face, and he knows from the subtle warmth that it’s been there for a while, gradually heating up with his own body temperature.

He remembers falling asleep by the heater. _Huh_ , Jongin thinks to himself. His dad must have brought him up here. He gets a sudden flashback to his childhood when he used to bodily pick a squealing and laughing Jongin up and put him to bed when he refused to go to sleep on time.

The towel slides off his face as he sits up. He looks down at it, and then reaches up to touch his right cheek. It feels slightly heated, and he realises then that it must have been overheated slightly from the heater when he fell asleep leaning against it. He rubs it gently and then lets his hand drop down to the duvet. The curtains are drawn and the little light from outside shows him that he’s been asleep for longer than he thought.

When he strains his ears, he can indeed hear their voices downstairs. They trail up subtly, until one of them suddenly breaks off and he can hear footsteps moving up the stairs. Jongin doesn’t particularly move.

His door opens. It’s his mother.

“Hey, Jongin. Did you just wake up from a nap?”

Jongin nods. He leans over his bed and lightly tosses the towel onto the bedside table.

“What was that for?” His mother asks. Jongin furrows his brows slightly. “Did you hurt yourself?”

It was his father, then. The light from the corridor floods the room, so it really must be later than he thought.

“It’s nothing,” he says. His father must not have told her about Jongin leaving his room, because she should be furious by now if he had. Jongin feels something close to being slightly put out at the lack of attention, a feeling that would ordinarily overpower him had he been right enough.

“Should I bring you up some dinner?” she asks him hesitantly after he drops his eyes.

He shakes his head, and offers a weak smile. It’s the most responsive he’s been in the past few days, and he’s hoping that it will encourage her to worry less and leave him alone. “Just going to rest,” he lets out. She sighs and allows it, making for the door again. She stops just before shutting it closed behind her.

“Don’t worry, Jongin,” she says softly. “He’ll wake up. Taemin will be just fine.” Jongin says nothing. He has already stopped listening, and isn’t even sure he’s hearing correctly because it takes too much energy that he doesn’t have to interact with anyone for too long. The door clicks.

He’s left in darkness again, and instead of turning the lamp by the bedside table on, he tugs at the curtain enough to be able to look outside. He focusses on the glass instead.

By the time Taemin finds Jongin, he’s exhausted. He’s not in the hospital, the school, or even the main house, which is actually totally empty when he goes in with the spare key beneath the welcome mat. But of course, the garage.

He’s there. He’s leaning against the heater, as always. Fast asleep, face smashed cutely against the warmth. Taemin breathes out a sigh of relief. He’s alright.

With a smile and a light step, Taemin sits down next to his friend and leans back against the heater. He’s only wearing a thin t-shirt, and the unexpected heat takes him by surprise. He jumps before slowly trying to ease back into it. It’s like being dumped into a hot, steaming bath before your skin can get used to the temperature. He turns to look at Jongin, and realises from the insistent near-pain on his back that Jongin’s face has to be burning up by now. “Jongin,” he whispers, to wake his friend up. No response. Taemin can see dark circles underneath his eyes, and he realises that Jongin must have been worried all week over him. But luckily, it doesn’t look like either of them have any major, lasting injuries.

But surely Jongin’s face is burning up by now, Taemin realises. After a few moments of taking in the heater’s surprising warmth, he gently picks Jongin up. He’s lost some weight since they last saw each other in the summer, but it’s still a bit of a struggle.

With a lot of pushing and shoving of doors and boxes with his feet and elbows, somehow Taemin manages to drag Jongin from the garage, through the doorway into his house and up the stairs to his room. He lays Jongin down onto his bed, and hurries into the bathroom to wet a towel with cold water for Jongin’s face. There isn’t a visible burn or anything, and the skin is still soft to the touch, but it’s warmed up so much that if he hadn’t seen Jongin leaning up against the heater himself Taemin would have thought that his friend had a fever.

In the brief moments where he’s wetting the towel, Taemin observes himself in the mirror. He doesn’t really look like he’s been in an accident. Although he doesn’t know how he woke up relatively unharmed, he knows from the absence of anyone else in the hospital—no parents, no friends, no Jongin, even—that it must not have been a very gory one. Perhaps it was just the coma. He’s never heard of anything like that—pure temporary and clean brain damage, but no other outward injuries—but he takes it all with an internal shrug. It is what it is. He doesn’t know anything about biology or whatever anyway. He only deals with computers and businesses.

Taemin walks back into Jongin’s bedroom, and carefully places the cold towel over Jongin’s exposed cheek. It helps that he’s lying on his side, and with equal care Taemin pulls Jongin’s shoes and socks off, and manoeuvres the covers from underneath Jongin so that he can pull them over him instead.

And then when that’s all done, he takes a moment to look through the window, across the garage into his own bedroom. The curtains are open, and the downstairs lights are off, even at this hour. His parents would still be at work then, the house empty.

So Taemin lies down, over the covers and not touching so as not to disturb his slumbering friend, and curls up on the duvet beside him.


	2. Chapter 2

When Taemin wakes up, it’s to Jongin sitting up in the bed, leg hanging over the edge. The towel, now cold, that he had placed over Jongin’s forehead is sitting forlornly next to him. Jongin makes no indication that he’s seen Taemin.

Taemin clears his throat. No answer, particularly.

He’s about to open his mouth to say something else, when the door opens and Jongin’s mother is standing in the frame.

She speaks up to Jongin, without any mention of Taemin at all. Of course, it wasn’t like she would find it too weird, considering how close they’ve always been. But usually there’s a sly comment or glance. But this time, it’s like he’s not even there.

They continue talking, and Taemin can’t help a sudden tightening in his chest at Jongin’s voice. He does feel a bit like he hasn’t heard it for a long time, but there’s something in it that Taemin has  _never_  heard before. Jongin sounds haunted.

It’s probably just cause he’s tired, Taemin thinks vaguely to himself.

Taemin stops paying attention for a moment, until the mention of his own name passes Mrs. Kim’s lips.

“—Taemin will go just fine.” A question mark starts to form in Taemin’s mind, because, uh, he’s  _right here_ , but then—

It happens like vertigo. Like a hallucination, a weird unexplainable dream, a surreal reality that could never, ever exist. Jongin is sitting up, in front of Taemin’s body which is flat on the bed, and then Jongin is turning around to sit by the window, his body moving straight through Taemin. As if he isn’t there.

And Taemin sees it. He sees how the outlines of his body fade into nothingness before his very eyes where Jongin is intersecting with it.

Something is very, very wrong.

Taemin doesn’t move for a long time. He just stares. Jongin is sitting, curled up in a ball with his knees up and arms around them. They’re bathed in the late afternoon darkness, and Jongin has just opened the curtains.

 

 

 

No thoughts go through Taemin’s mind. He’s in the far corner of the room, right next to the door. If it opens, the swinging door should hit him. He watches Jongin the whole night, eyes unblinking.

In the morning, Jongin’s mother comes upstairs into the room again, but after only sighing at Jongin’s slumped, sleeping figure by the window, she gently places a plate of hot breakfast on the only free-from-shit surface in the room—a stack of books by Taemin’s side. Taemin tries to meet her eyes as she leans down nearly to his eye-level, but she takes no notice of him whatsoever.

Although he was in a strange near-trance the whole night, it’s only now that sunlight is beginning to stream through the window and the room takes a more material, lifelike quality in the daytime that Taemin slowly starts to snap out of it and begin to feel bored.

He starts by rocking back and forth a little, shuffling his feet about and tapping on the wooden floorboard.

There’s no sound, like he would ordinarily expect, which is strange. But if he is somehow not real, or a  _ghost_ —a thought that had somehow wheedled its way into his brain at one point in the night, though he dismissed it immediately because it was just too ridiculous (plus Mrs Kim had acknowledged that he would be alright, meaning he was still alive at least)—or whatever, then it is strange that he can’t touch anything. But he isn’t falling through the floorboards.

He doesn’t know what it is, though he’s been guessing for hours—is it the natural wood? Can he touch nature? Like he could touch Jongin’s body when he brought him upstairs?

He tries experimenting a little, eventually reaching for the plate beside him.

His hand goes through the plate, but— _aha!_ He can feel a slight heat radiating from it.

One poke. Straight through. Another—again, no contact. Another—

Warm, but quickly cooling porcelain. Taemin’s jaw drops.

He gets on his knees and tries to hold the plate. His right hand, which he had poked it with first, manages to push it slightly, but his left goes straight through.

He tries to do what he did before again: he pokes. One poke, two, three. On the third, the tip of his left finger makes hard contact with the plate.

Does he have to touch something a bunch of times in order to make it solid to him? Maybe that’s why the floor is keeping him up.

He places his palms flat underneath the plate on the sides, still letting the books support its weight.

He’s going to see what happens if he stays perfectly still.

Slowly, so slowly, he feels the warmth of the hot plate begin to seep into his skin. And with it, the plate is becoming more and more solid. After ten seconds, he can pick up the plate.

Carefully, he sets it down on the floor. He tries again with the book at the top of the pile. It’s a brand new textbook, probably for school, probably still untouched by Jongin.

He waits for over twenty seconds, but he can’t pick it up—it still feels like he’s just holding his hands in mid-air for no reason.

Is it the heat, then? What else could it be?

But then how did he pick up Jongin? Body heat?

Taemin runs over to Jongin’s bed, and places a hand on the sleeping, slouched boy’s cheek. He holds it there, but he can’t feel it.

_Body heat should work!_  Taemin thinks in frustration. But it doesn’t. He waits a full minute just to be sure. Nothing.

He slumps on the bed in defeat. Hey, he can sit on it without falling through! But why is that? He supposes the bed is warm, probably more so than other beds because it’s surrounded by heating—the radiator hugged by the wall and the bed, and the under-floor heating—

Ah, that would explain the floor then.

And, actually, Taemin realises with an almost comical dawning coming over him: it explains Jongin, too. They had been by the blazing electric heater yesterday. Both of them would have warmed up by it enough for Taemin to bring Jongin up the stairs.

Before he’s even fully formed the plan, Taemin is running down the stairs and into the garage. The house should be empty at this hour, but the living room is in the back of the house and Jongin’s parents shouldn’t be able to see him if he goes between the staircase and the garage even if they were here. It’s safe.

The heater is still miraculously turned on and blazing. Taemin lets out a sigh of relief, because of course he may not be able to turn it on otherwise.

He sits there, body making as much contact as possible—chest and folded knees flattening his body against the heater, hands up so his palms take the heat directly as well. He lets another full minute pass.

And then he’s running up the stairs again, heart pumping wildly in his throat, the door’s in front of him, his hand is on the knob—

But then he hears it. Quietly, quietly. A sob. It freezes Taemin for a moment, and then as he’s conflicted about how he’s going to approach Jongin now that he’ll be able to finally see him, the heat seems to give out with a loud  _whoosh_  that’s only in Taemin’s imagination and his hand falls through the knob.

He can’t open it. He must have expelled too much heat running up the stairs.

He tries again. He forces himself to walk slowly as he climbs the stairs, and of course it feels like forever, but then—

Nope. Too slow, his hand goes straight through. He tries again.

And again. He’s exhausted by the fourth, and at the fifth he waits impatiently to turn invisible again before walking straight through the door and into the corner again in defeat.

Jongin is lying flat on his back on the bed now. He’s still wearing his jeans and shirt from yesterday. One of his arms hangs limply over the side of the bed, and the other is covering his eyes as he cries.

Taemin wants to bang his head over and over again on the wall behind him. Is this how it is, then? Is this why Jongin’s crying? Is it because of him? Does he think Taemin won’t wake up?

“I am right here,” he says loud and clear. No reaction, as expected.

Taemin still feels the utter defeat, and slumps against the wall. He ends up staring out the window himself.

Eventually, Jongin falls asleep once more.

 

 

 

After a while, Taemin gets bored again, and decides to wander around his best friend’s room. Even though he’s been in there every day most of his life, in the past few months of his absence it’s changed.

Well, that’s a bit of a lie. Especially over the past couple years, where he’s been in here even less and less. But it’s still only now that he’s noticed some of the changes.

There’s more trophies. Jongin was always a dance prodigy, but he hadn’t really taken it all that seriously before. Or, at least, that’s what Taemin always thought.

With a frown, Taemin wonders why Jongin never told him about some of these. There are ones dated as recently as three months ago. Not even an email? They’re all gold. Well,  _sometimes_  they’re silver, but none of the recent ones.

Why didn’t Jongin ever tell Taemin about this stuff? Just looking at it now, he feels a huge swell of pride for his friend.

But then, of course, it’s not like Taemin’s been telling him much about what he’s been up to either. Only a few months into his first year at college and he’s already won a young enterpriser’s award and grant. It was something he had told himself he’d tell Jongin once he got here, but not before.

A lot of things had changed in Taemin once he’d gotten away from this place. On the outside, looking back, he could see why things with Jongin weren’t really where they should have been. Even if Jongin had looked like he wanted to argue back in the car on the day of the crash, Taemin is still firm about what he meant.

It’s not healthy for either of them to be this clingy to each other. They had their own lives and futures to live out, and if they only had room for each other, then their lives could never go forward.

They were holding each other back, and as the older one Taemin feels that he has the responsibility to put things in firm control even if Jongin is still stubborn and childish about it.

But maybe he has a point, Taemin thinks. The old Jongin would have gushed about these awards, taken a million pictures and selfies with them and sent them to Taemin every week. He would have waited with a big sloppy grin on his face, full of expectation of Taemin’s approval that Taemin knows he thrives on.

But he hadn’t, and here was the proof. Maybe he really had changed, maybe Jongin had understood what was wrong with them too, and that was why he kept calm about all this stuff.

Well, it’s no use now.

As Taemin starts to turn away from the trophies, he notices a notebook on the desk. He would have ignored it, ordinarily, since it was probably just for school or something.

Except Jongin doesn’t take notes. He’s a crammer. He gets through each class by napping, and then hoping for the best the night before each exam.

It has to be a diary. And judging by the massive “>:(“ sign over the cover in thick black marker, Taemin is right.

There is an initial moment of conflict, of course. Taemin is ordinarily a law-abiding citizen with relatively strict morals, after all, and this would be a blatant breach of his very best friend’s privacy.

But then he realises with a pang that a year ago, he would not have even considered that Jongin had privacy separate from his own.

Maybe being invisible—or whatever this is—is a blessing in disguise. Maybe now he’ll be able to understand Jongin’s side. Obviously he was having some sort of out-of-body experience, possibly from being in a coma or something. Or maybe this is all a dream.

But there’s a surreal quality about everything, and it doesn’t seem so harmful or disrespectful now to just read the diary. Taemin can’t even be sure any of this is real.

He could wake up any second.

So he makes the decision—to his credit he  _does_  feel a little bad that it doesn’t take that long to make it—and then walks over to Jongin’s sleeping figure so he can lean over it and warm his hands on the radiator.

Of course, Jongin would feel it if he were to trail his hands on him now. But the heat from the inconveniently-placed radiator isn’t enough to warm up his whole body, and if Jongin saw a pair of floating hands—hands, he would, surely, recognise as belonging to his best friend—no doubt he would probably pass out from the fright.

But still, Taemin can’t help but trail a finger lightly over the surface of Jongin’s brow. Touching, but not touching. It’s enough to feel the warm heat of his body, to know that somehow, at least Jongin is still alive throughout all of this.

 

 

 

It takes him about an age, but Taemin finally sits with his back against the heater, diary in his hands.

He’s had to struggle with about a million trips to the radiator to warm his hands enough to shove the diary onto the floor—as quietly as possible—and across the floor, then open the door as carefully as he can and then shut it, and then get it down the stairs and out the door into the cold winter air.

It was an Olympian effort, but now it’s done and he can sit and read in peace and, more importantly, warmth.

He flicks to the last page that’s been written in, and realises that Jongin hasn’t written a thing after the date marking Taemin going to college. With a frown, mostly of confusion, he flicks back to the beginning.

Jongin must hardly write in it, because the first page dates back to nearly five years ago, and the ink is so faded and musty-looking that Taemin is surprised that it hasn’t washed away from being dropped in a bath, or something. That’s exactly the sort of thing Jongin would accidentally do to his own belongings, but for some reason this notebook is totally pristine and clearly well-taken care of.

It’s filled with nothing but their own antics.

No mention of Jongin’s family or school, unless it’s related to Taemin.

The ache starts to grow, tiny and barely noticeable at first, but then slowly and steadily it’s starting to press painfully against the walls of his chest.

It’s innocent. It’s absolutely  _hilarious_  as well. There’s written accounts of all their best moments and memories with each other—the pranks, the plots, the quiet moments in between when Taemin’s said something that he hardly remembers saying now, as he reads them back in this journal, and Jongin finds it so touching that he copies the quote down and then rips its meaning apart for pages and pages, trying to understand his, or what he thinks are his far superior friend’s words of wisdom which he both admires and is frustrated at because he hates how much of a smart-ass he thinks Taemin is. Taemin can’t always tell, as he goes through the pages, whether he should be offended at half of this crap, or in tears with happiness and relish as he remembers and relives it all again.

It hurts too, of course. To see how they had been in those days, and then comparing it to now. It’s unspeakably painful. But what can you do? Memories are only pleasant as they are—memories. It’s better to relive them fondly than to cling onto them, hoping that nothing ever changes in the present time.

They’ve had their best moments, all recorded down in this little book, and even though Taemin feels like he wants to just rip it apart at the feelings of abandonment and loneliness that it fills him with, he knows that they were always special.

Taemin&Jongin, one word. Inseparable. Perfect and unstoppable, but only together.

They were always together, of course.

Until they weren’t.

When was that day? When Jongin changed his interests, Taemin supposes.

It’s not that that particular act of decision-making directly tore them apart, but it still felt like a beginning. At least to Taemin.

The beginning of an end. It was the first day he felt fear.

Fear that he could get thrown away. That even the things Jongin loved the most could get thrown out and changed out for the new. Replaced.

Taemin never got replaced by a person. He got replaced by ambition.

And yet, Jongin had still had the  _nerve_  to accuse him of being the reason they drifted apart. Because  _Taemin_  was the one that went away to college, that ignored him the past two years in preparation for it, as if that had not come about because Taemin simply had nothing else to fill his days with now that Jongin had dreams.

_He’s a hypocrite,_  Taemin thinks bitterly to himself. It’s been a domino-like effect, but Jongin still started it. Taemin knows it’s childish to think that way, but when it comes down to it, Jongin was the one that had taken Taemin for granted, had assumed that he would just wait and hang around until Jongin returned every evening late at night from practise. As if Taemin didn’t have school the next day, or homework to do. He was a year ahead in high school, back then, and his work load was so vastly different to Jongin’s in difficulty and amount.

Maybe Taemin is just being bitter. It crosses his mind as he lets a quiet laugh out at Jongin’s retelling of the time Taemin had forgotten to turn up to Jongin’s birthday because he had overslept and Jongin had had to bring the party straight to Taemin’s bed instead—balloons, cake, pile of presents and all.

He tips the notebook so pages fall over and the dates flash through each turned page.

Without thinking about it, he finds himself stopping at the date it all started: Jongin had told him he was going to try out for the ballet academy the next city over. The same day he quit all of his weekend dance groups—jazz, street, modern—and decided instead that he would become the greatest ballet dancer of all time. That he would practise every day in order to catch up so he could make it. He had been fourteen years old at the time.

There’s an entry. It’s long. Taemin reads it.

 

_I told Taemin about the ballet thing. He looked at me funny. I didn’t really talk about it like the decision was a big deal or anything, but I was kinda hoping he’d be more supportive!!!!! Bitch._

_Like it does occur to me that maybe he doesn’t realise the significance of me doing this. I’ve finally decided on the thing that I want to pursue for a career, and he’s just like “alright” (well I don’t really remember what he said because I was too busy stewing in my UTTER DISAPPOINTMENT)_

_I don’t know, I don’t want to start thinking that we’re drifting apart or anything. I was always scared that that would happen, especially since I know I like him a lot more than he likes me. Like, probably the love between us is the same since we grew up together so it’s like a brotherly love and we have that in common, the fact that we love each other, but otherwise I think his personality is a lot better than mine I’m really whiny and needy sometimes and I bet it’s really painfully obvious how much younger I am than him and he’s a lot cooler and waaaay better looking. If I was more handsome we’d be like these cool kids in school and everyone would hate and love us and we’d get loads of chocolate for Valentine’s day but I ‘d get more because I’m nicer than he is to be quite honest and therefore more approachable (see I have my saving graces!!!)_

_Although now that I think about it, I never really see any girls (or boys for that matter) approaching Tae for anything. Like dates or whatever. It doesn’t really matter I guess when you’re in high school, but I would hate more than anything if he was lonely. Sometimes I worry that because I’m always with him, it stops other people from approaching him. I guess I do have to admit that I’d feel horrible if he felt lonely while he’s with me, but I know that’s a bit irrational since it’s not the same as with a girl or someone romantic or whatever. Like he can get a girlfriend but I just want to be able to spend some time with him every day._

_I kinda want to dismiss that whole above paragraph though because to be honest, as much as I love him (eww I can’t believe I wrote that) and want him to be happy and stuff, a part of me (it’s bad but it’s a huge part of me to be honest) really doesn’t want to share him no matter what. Cause, what’s wrong with me? I mean if it’s romance he’s after I’ll sit still a bit and let him slobber on my eyebrow or something, no harm done. But quite frankly, he’s all mine and anyone else can suck it. I don’t give a shit that it’s a selfish thing to think because let’s face it, he’s never going to find out and even if he does realise how much I refuse to share, he’ll just go on thinking I’m childish like he already does. Whatever, I don’t give a shit. He’s older and cooler and better than me and I don’t know why he laughs at my awful jokes but if he runs away it would be pretty understandable and I’m waiting for it because I don’t deserve him._

 

There’s more, and Taemin reads it all. Slowly, his heart gets heavier and heavier.

There’s so much, so much more.

It’s not how Taemin thought it was. Jongin doesn’t indicate at all that he thinks he abandoned Taemin. It’s not mentioned at all.

Instead, it’s treated like an inevitability. Like Jongin has always known, all along, that it would come trundling to an end between them. He notes it, here and there, in his entries over several months and years that they’ve more and more distant. He doesn’t sound upset.

_He’s acting,_  Taemin realises with a dawning dread, _like it’s a_ blessing  _to be with me, and that eventually I’ll wake up and realise he’s not that great and then move on._

It’s a confession. This whole journal is three words stretched out into thousands, all about Taemin and himself, everything they are, aren’t, could be, what Jongin wishes desperately that they were.

Taemin closes the book. His back is burning against the heater. He can feel it now. He looks around, and his body is in front of himself. He can see everything. He’s solid.

Slowly, numbly, he makes his way back to Jongin’s room. He drops the book back on the desk without looking once at Jongin. His eyes sweep over the rest of the room, the walls, the floorboards, the curtains. The photos on the top shelf of the bookcase. All childhood memories of himself and Jongin. The woven friendship bracelet that Taemin had made for Jongin when he felt sorry for him that one summer when he went to a camp when he was eleven, and Jongin had been upset because he was too young to go too. It’s taped on the frame of the bookcase, dangling loosely because Jongin’s wrist doesn’t fit into it anymore.

And finally, his eyes rest on the sleeping boy on the bed. He’s on his side now, and his hair hides his eyes. The afternoon sun tries to shine through the closed curtains, but instead cast the room in an ashen, dim light.

Taemin doesn’t know why he never noticed until now how much older Jongin looks. His legs are longer, chest bulkier with subtle musculature that can only come from years and years of dancing. As he steps closer to the figure, he can see how sharper Jongin’s jaw has become. Why did Jongin never say anything? What did he think Taemin would say? Did he think he would laugh, or coldly brush him off, tell him to wait to get over it because he surely would?

What  _would_  Taemin have said, if Jongin had ever finally told him his feelings for him?

Taemin tries to think about it, but his mind won’t cooperate. There’s nothing but the stranger on the bed, with a face he thought he’d know forever, but suddenly can’t draw up a picture of it smiling the way he used to be able to.

He brings a shaking hand up to rest on the side of Jongin’s face, and his heart leaps when it makes contact with the warm skin. Jongin leans into it, even in his sleep. A corner of Taemin’s mouth lifts.

No, he’s wrong. It’s him. It’s his Jongin. The Jongin he’s known from childhood, practically from birth. The Jongin he has held during thunderstorms when they were too loud for infant ears, the Jongin he cuddled in winter by the fire to warm up after a snowball fight. The Jongin he’s loved since the beginning of his own existence.

“Where have you been, Jonginnie?” Taemin whispers with barely a movement to his lips. He notes with dulled surprise that even if he’s half-dead or something, he can still cry at least.

He lifts the hand resting on Jongin’s cheek carefully just in case it wakes him up, and wipes his tears as best as he can with his straying attention. His eyes are on Jongin, and his thoughts are miles away.

_Did he leave, or did I?_  It’s a question that echoes around his brain a bit, but then with a tired revelation it leaves him.

Who cares? Jongin thinks he’s in the hospital, stuck in a  _coma_. Jongin’s in pain right now, because he thinks Taemin isn’t going to be with him any more, not just in another city but in the entire  _universe_.

Taemin carefully sits on the bed, manoeuvres himself over Jongin’s slumped form so he’s on the other, emptier side, and wraps his arms around Jongin from behind. One arm under Jongin, wrapped around his waist, the other over and tucked under Jongin’s own arm so they’re aligned and held tight to Jongin’s chest. He’s still able to touch him, and if he presses his body close enough, the heat all over should keep him solid enough to stay.

He can bury his nose into Jongin’s hair, and it nearly makes him want to cry again. Who cares if it’s weird? Taemin hates himself already for everything he’s said to Jongin before the accident, because know he knows. He knows that clinging to Taemin like he did was the only way he could keep a broken heart at bay.

_And it’s my fault_ , Taemin thinks as he bites down on his lips to stop the wave of emotion that threatens to come over him once he fully takes in Jongin’s scent, after months away.  _I should have seen this earlier, and then I could have let him down gently before it escalated, and no one would have been hurt_. But it’s too late now.

“I’m sorry.” Taemin presses the words into the back of Jongin’s neck, soft as if it came from a ghost.

 

 

 

Jongin can’t pinpoint exactly what is wrong when he wakes up, until he realises that it’s not a duvet that’s wrapped around him, but a person. He looks down in confusion. There’s a gasp behind him, and pale arms wrapped around his own.

“Uh… Mom?” He’s dazed and still half-asleep.

A throat clears. “Uh, no.”

Jongin bolts up and jumps straight out of bed, turning around to face Taemin in a split second.

“Look, I know it’s a shock but something really weird happened and we  _really_  need to retain heat, trust me for now—“

“Did you seriously run away from the hospital? Even if you woke up today there’s no way you should be out, are you out of your fucking mind? I was worried sick about you and now —“

“Jongin  _listen_ ,” Taemin all but yells. Jongin snaps his mouth shut, looking at Taemin in wild confusion, and worry. He hadn’t listened to a word Taemin was just saying.

“Something weird happened, I said. Please believe me. I’m not crazy. I’m invisible unless I’m warm. Like as in temperature. Do you understand?”

Jongin just stares. “Oh my God, what happened to you? We’re taking you back right now, and you can get some more rest, okay?” Taemin rolls his eyes impatiently and allows himself to be pulled off the bed and upright by Jongin. When he’s standing, he roughly tears his arm away from Jongin’s grip.

“It’s doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me now. Watch me and you’ll see.”

“Taemin,  _please—“_

_“_ Watch me.”

Jongin scowls but humours him for a moment.

It doesn’t take long. Jongin is staring into Taemin’s eyes like a starved beast, though Taemin can tell he is trying to hide it. Not that it does anything to avoid the guilt the look gives him.

One minute he’s staring into Taemin’s eyes, the next he’s staring into Taemin’s eyes and the curtain that should have been very firmly  _behind_  him.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit,  _holy shit,”_  Jongin starts to yell, grasping at his hair, and then leaping at Taemin.

His hand touches his face for a moment, and then gives nearly immediately, sliding straight through.

“Oh my God,” Jongin gasps. “I’m going insane.”

“No you aren’t—“

“ _Make it stop already you said something before, I know you did. Make it stop_.” It comes out as a horrible screech and Taemin doesn’t think he can do this anymore, can’t stand the way Jongin’s staring at him in horror, hands pulling at his own hair, looking ready to tear it all out.

“Heat,” he says. His voice comes out in a weird echoey quality—muted, as though he were just leaving the room and entering another very large one.

“Heat,” Jongin repeats in a whisper. The word seems to hang between them, neither seeming to fully comprehend what needs to be done, and then it passes and Jongin is on him in a heartbeat, face tucked into Taemin’s neck, arms wrapped around him, hands rubbing his chest, back, shoulders, whatever he can reach. Taemin’s feet neatly together, Jongin’s sandwiching them from the outside to align their legs.

At first, it hardly seems to work. Jongin has to keep his hands moving or they seem to be right about to fall through. But then eventually, when they’re back on the bed, under the covers, Taemin tucked neatly underneath the empty space below Jongin, he begins to feel himself solidify again.

The whole time, Jongin stares at Taemin in wonder.

“What the fuck,” he whispers. There’s a hair’s breadth between their faces. Even with all the questions going through Jongin’s head, he still manages a blush at the proximity.

He’s fantasised about something like this before, of course.

But, well, not quite like  _this_.

“So, uh, you need to be warm in order to be solid?” Jongin says, a bit lamely, since he’s basically already gathered as much.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Jongin tries to hold on tighter, and when Taemin reciprocates the hold, Jongin flinches in pain. Taemin immediately drops his hand from Jongin’s back, remembering the extent of everything that happened since the accident.

“Jongin, you’re still injured. We can’t stay like this.”

“But you have to stay warm!” Taemin turns his head slightly to hide his smirk, though Jongin probably sees anyway since he’s still watching the boy in that strange, hungry way of his.

“Isn’t there anything else we can do? This isn’t going to be comfortable for very long. You’re kinda crushing me.”

“Oh! Sorry.” Jongin leaps up and hovers on his hands and feet so he isn’t slumped over Taemin’s chest and legs. But then he remembers the heat thing and immediately moves back.

The sudden movement and resulting “oof” from Taemin brings an even brighter blush on Jongin’s face and makes him look like he would want to disappear himself.

Taemin hides a concerned grimace at what that must have looked like to Jongin. He doesn’t want to make things worse for him than they already, apparently, have been all along.

But they still have a few things they have to talk about.

“How about a really hot bath?” Taemin suggests.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Bath. Yeah, hey, that’s a good idea.”

This time Taemin doesn’t hide his eye roll.

“Go run it and keep the door closed so the steam doesn’t get out.”

“But what if you disappear again while I’m gone?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll follow you into the bathroom, and then I’ll jump in when it’s ready. I don’t need to be solid while I wait.”

Jongin frowns, but he supposes it’s the smartest thing to do right now. Not that he would ever challenge Taemin’s superior opinion by thinking up an alternative idea.

“Okay,” Jongin finally says. Taemin is underneath him and looking expectant and more than a little rosy from the heat.

But his friend is depending on him right now.

“Let’s go.”

 

 

 

Jongin adjusts the radiator-warmed beanie so it covers Taemin’s ears as well. Just in case. Taemin’s long black hair is sandwiched tightly underneath, and it lays spread all over his shoulders to help with the heat.

“So,” Taemin says. They stare at each other, knees up and poking out through the bubbly, scalding water. Jongin takes no chances.

The shower curtains are drawn, to retain as much steam from the water as possible. It’s surreal in a way, because it feels like they’re completely closed off from the rest of the world, tucked into their respective corners of the bath, shielded from everything that isn’t  _them_.

A little bubble filled with nothing but Taemin and Jongin and all their emotional baggage that has accumulated over the years of them ignoring there being any baggage in the first place. Taemin sighs.

“So,” Jongin replies, just as uneasily.

And so they talk.


	3. Chapter 3

 

“How are you like this, exactly? How do I know I haven’t gone insane or something?”

Taemin shrugs easily. “I don’t know. We’re only little blips in the universe. It’s not like we know everything. It is what it is so I guess that means this is possible now.”

“Jesus.”

Taemin smirks. Truthfully, he doesn’t know what to say now. What are they supposed to talk about?

“So are you like Taemin’s spirit, or something? Do we have to get you back to your body or whatever?”

Taemin considers that, and finally nods. “Probably. We can go do that later today.”

Jongin immediately starts to stand. “ _Or_ ,” he starts, “we can go right this second and fix this, and I don’t have to worry about my possible deteriorated mental health or the validity of your existence.”

“Sit down, Jongin. I have something to say first.”

Jongin stares at him in near-disbelief, because what could possibly be more important then getting things back to how they were before? “What?” he finally croaks out.

“If I go back now, everyone is going to hound me. The doctors will run tests first, then my parents and other family and friends will come over to check up on me. It’ll be a while yet before we can sit down and talk properly, then there’s the matter of sorting out my school absences and stuff. We’re already here. Let’s talk.”

Jongin takes it all in easily enough, but the last two words seem to hang between them dangerously. How could they simply go back to that conversation in the car, after all of this?

He nods silently, and holds up a hand before Taemin can speak. He has to think through what he wants to say, because he gets the feeling that this opportunity won’t repeat itself.

“I never thought any of it was weird,” Jongin blurts out eventually.

“I know,” Taemin replies with a sigh. “Neither did I. I still don’t, really. It’s just that being so far away from you made me think that I was stuck in the moment and not aware of how unhealthy our relationship is.”

“But you started to distance yourself from me way before you went to college,” Jongin points out. “You started reading all these heavy boring books and spending more time with them than with me.”

And Taemin feels it again. It’s weird when he’s warm like this, because now he really does feel like himself in his actual body. And he can feel that rage start to surface again, the rage that seemed to be muted when he was invisible and watching Jongin in silence. It’s like he can think clearer when the warmth really seeps in.

“Jongin,” Taemin lets out through his teeth. “I started all of that because of _you_. You abandoned _me_ when you started all this dance school bullshit, so what was I supposed to do?”

“Dance school bullshit?” Jongin starts, but Taemin never stops speaking.

“—You expected me to just sit around, waiting for you to come home every day? Don’t fucking forget that no matter how close we are, I _am_ older than you and I _do_ have more things to think about than you do. I also have school and college and work to think about, and I suddenly became free of you enough to actually work out what I wanted to do with my life. Don’t you see how messed up this is? You’re getting upset at me because I didn’t drop everything, because I didn’t stop the world for you whenever you came back? I am _not_ you’re fucking _husband_ or some bullshit. We _aren’t married_ , Jongin. I am your _friend_ and that is _it_.”

They’re both silent after that. Taemin still does not meet Jongin’s eyes, though he knows that they’re currently wide with shock. More than anything, he feels like a broken record that just won’t get through to Jongin no matter how many times he explains himself. It’s like Jongin doesn’t even want to try to understand.

After a few minutes of unbearable, choking silence, Taemin relaxes slightly and meets Jongin’s eyes. They’re unreadable.

“I want you to know that it’s alright, how you feel.” Jongin’s brows pull together only slightly. “I’m okay with it. I guess it makes a lot of this make sense now.” A slow but steady frown starts to form on Jongin’s face. “But please understand that it doesn’t mean I have to do anything about it other than be understanding and patient while you get over this, which I know you will with time.”

In a way, both of their faces drop, but for different reasons entirely. For Taemin, it’s a peculiar feeling. Reading the journal and finding out about Jongin’s true feelings for him was indeed a surprise, but not a total shock. He had probably always known, all along, without openly acknowledging it. But now that he’s revealed, _finally_ , that he knows about it to Jongin, that it’s fine, as well as letting all of his thoughts on their relationship out into the open, he feels like there’s a big load off of his chest. Yes, he’s finally done what’s been bothering him for a long time. He can get on with his life now, and put this behind him. He can move on—

These thoughts melt away from Taemin as soon as they form in his head, and now that years of tension have been released from his shoulders, he isn’t quite sure what to think of anymore. He feels strangely empty, but it’s relaxing. He settles more comfortably in the tub. The water swishes over his shoulders and dampens the ends of his hair.

Jongin, on the other hand, is staring open-mouthed at Taemin, face devoid of colour despite the heat.

“You know?” He barely whispers.

Taemin smiles easily, hopefully kindly. “It’s okay, Jonginnie.”

“Why is it okay? I’ve ruined everything.”

“No you haven’t. Why would you say that? I don’t think you did.”

Jongin is staring at him in disbelief, but also with something akin to suspicion. This didn’t seem like the Taemin from about a minute ago.

“No it’s not fucking okay,” Jongin starts, carding a hand through his hair as he faces his friend with a tension in his shoulders that’s also absolute frustration. “You’re only saying that because you think this is a stupid little crush, and because it’s easy for you to say anything you want that you think will make me feel better, because you can always just go back to college and forget about me all over again.”

“Jongin, _no—“_

_“_ Yes.” It’s a whisper, but it comes out hoarsely as Jongin’s eyes flit from side to side, a dance of thoughts moving through his mind, thoughts Taemin can’t see but he can see them slowly consume his friend as he starts to pull harder on his hair.

“Jongin, please calm down. I already told you that it’s going to be alright.”

“ _No_ ,” Jongin yells. “You think I’m unstable or something, right? Why are you speaking to me like this, all carefully when you had no problems telling me the truth just before? You’re a fucking _liar_ —“

“No.” It’s a single, hard word but it’s all Taemin says as he kneels forward on his knees and grabs Jongin’s wrists so he can pull them away from his hair. There’s a struggle but finally Taemin manages to trap Jongin’s hands against his face, so he can hold onto it with Jongin and force his eyes to look into his.

“Let me tell you why it’s fine, Jonginnie.” The struggle stops but Jongin still stares with disbelieving. “It’s fine because contrary to what you may think, although we both stuck the wedge that’s sitting between us, it’s also been the best damn thing to happen to us. And we did it together.” Jongin doesn’t look like he quite follows, and Taemin continues.

“You lead me to my future. You gave me the chance, the circumstance, the opportunity to find out about my interests, and be able to pursue it even further. It was in those old boxes in the garage. I read through those while waiting for you. So yeah, maybe we both started to drift apart around that time. But if I didn’t leave you alone more, you wouldn’t have worked as hard with your spare time as much anymore. Look, inevitably we get pulled in different directions, alright? That’s always a thing that’s going to happen to everyone, and we aren’t special. But this all happened because of the two of us, _together_. We both have had a huge influence on each other, because of the decisions that we made together. I know you like to act like it’s you that clings on to me, and not at all the other way around, but you know that it’s not actually like that, right?

“You’ve totally shaped my life, Jongin. You had all this ambition at such a young age, younger than me, and it made me realise that I didn’t want to fall behind. I always rushed to be able to stand next to your level. Maybe that pulled us apart, but to me we built each other up. And I’m okay with that. You’ve given me so much, Jonginnie,” Taemin finishes with a whisper. “And I know now what you mean about drifting apart. You’re right, of course. And it’s stupid, now that I know your feelings, for me to just ignore everything wrong with us, everything I _thought_ was wrong with us, because it’s not the case that we’re just friends anymore.”

Jongin hangs on to his every word, eyes flitting back and forth to match the way Taemin’s own gaze at him evenly. He hangs onto every word, drinking it all in, Taemin so close, the words he’s always wanted him to say hanging around them, finally out loud, and it’s all the same, all the same as what Taemin has been repeating to him over and over again all this time, but somehow it seems skewed, somehow it seems surreal, there’s something different about it, something Jongin can’t place but he can’t stop the thrill that electrifies him as he hears it all. He hangs onto every word like he’s drowning in it.

But then Jongin’s stunned expression moves like lighting into one of brash confusion. “What are you saying? I thought you didn’t like me back.”

“I don’t know about that. But I don’t think I can stand for anyone to be left behind anymore,” Taemin says dead quietly, looking into Jongin’s eyes though his own don’t seem so focussed. There’s hardly any distance between their faces, and Taemin’s cheeks are flushed from the heat and the horrible beanie is flattening his long, tied-back black hair though a few strands have escaped and are long enough that they tickle Jongin’s collar bones.

Jongin doesn’t get a chance to reply because Taemin has already moved his hands down and dropped them so he can gently hold onto Jongin’s face with his own hands and trail his fingers over them and plant his lips lightly on his jaw before he has even understood the full implication of Taemin’s words.

“I don’t understand.” Jongin’s voice hitches as he shudders at the warm breeze of Taemin’s heavy breath. “I thought you didn’t love me back.”

“I don’t think you care about that, Jonginnie.” Those words seem to ring a lot clearer between them than anything else Taemin has said, but then Taemin won’t meet his eyes again, this time because they’re closed, and he’s leaning in.

It’s a blur and Jongin’s jaw would have dropped throughout the whole thing if his mouth hadn’t been so occupied. They entwine; their kisses, their tongues, their legs, their arms, hands, their whole bodies. Taemin slides onto his lap and circles his legs around Jongin’s waist. He rests one hand on Jongin’s cheekbone, and the other trails down to where their bodies are joined.

They’ve run out of things to talk about.

When they’re towelled off and dry, they start to form a plan.

They have to get Taemin back into his body.

“I probably won’t make it to the hospital with the amount of heat left in me, but that’ll probably be for the best,” Taemin says.

“Why is that?” Jongin asks. He leans down to put on his socks. They’ll have to leave now if they want to be back before his parents realise he’s left whilst still injured. Though, it really does feel like he’s been fully healed for a while now.

“Well I can go through objects when I’m not solid, so I should be able to lay over my body when we get there. And, I don’t know. I don’t know how it works, but hopefully my body will, uh, suck me back in or something.”

Jongin lets out a brief laugh, but it doesn’t last because there’s simply too much fear swimming around the air between them. What if it doesn’t work? What does all of this even _mean_? How could the laws of physics allow something like this to happen? Now that he can’t dance anymore, could he get famous researching out-of-body experiences?

“Well,” Jongin says finally as he stands up. He lets out a hand, but then drops it before Taemin has the chance to hold onto it. He doesn’t want to face the idea that Taemin already won’t be able to hold onto him anymore.

Taemin seems to understand, because he doesn’t say anything or look put out. Jongin smiles at that, because it’s like they’re in sync again, a thought he hasn’t had since they were children.

“Just follow me, okay? In case you disappear again.”

“Sure thing,” Taemin says easily. He’s already fading, and it wrenches Jongin’s insides apart enough that he grabs his friend and simply holds him a last time before they leave.

Taemin’s arms slowly circle around him. “Don’t worry, Jonginnie. It’s all going to be fine now. We’re going to fix this and then you’ll get to hold me for real.”

The man at the hospital reception doesn’t get a word in when Jongin walks straight past him and into the corridors. He already knows where Taemin’s room is, so he doesn’t need to ask. The man throws his hands up in defeat and stops calling after him past the second time.

_Room 319, 319, 319…_ Jongin thinks to himself once he’s out of the elevator at the third floor and running by the doors. He starts to count them as they fly by.

_315, 317….319_. Jongin opens the door.

It’s empty.

“Taemin?” Jongin whispers. He means to address the Taemin that should have been invisibly following him. “Sit by the radiator for a moment,” he says.

After a couple of minute, Taemin appears in front of him, mirroring the expression on Jongin’s own face.

“Huh,” Jongin says. The anxiety is starting to build up, but he pushes it back down for now. “I was wondering if maybe you got here ahead of me and already got yourself out. This is definitely the room, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Taemin agrees. “Go ask a nurse, maybe they’ve moved me or something.”

“Okay. Let’s leave as soon as you disappear again, I don’t want you vanishing in front of a bunch of people.”

Taemin looks like that would amuse him, but stands up and away from the heater.

It takes only a few moments, and then they’re off back down the corridor until they get to the nurse’s desk.

The not-knowing is making Jongin’s hands shake. He knows that there’s probably a very logical reason for why Taemin’s not there anymore, but in this suspended moment before he finds out the answer, his heart is threatening to leap right out of his chest.

“Excuse me,” he says with a clearing of his throat that’s more to give him the chance to catch his breath before the anxiety can fully steal it away. “I’m looking for patient Taemin Lee’s room? It looks like he’s been moved.”

“I’ll look him straight up,” the nurse says kindly. There’s a moment where all Jongin can hear are the _clack-clack_ of the keyboard as the nurse types Taemin’s name into the computer database.

“I’m sorry, was that Taemin Lee you asked about?”

“Yes,” Jongin says with a frown. Somehow, he knows what’s coming.

“Can I get his birthdate, please?” Jongin gives it even though he could swear his tongue is moving weird and nearly choking him.

The nurse furrows her eyebrows and stares at Jongin. “I’m very sorry, but it looks like he passed away two months ago. Are you a relative?”

Jongin runs.

The warmth that floods Taemin as he solidifies in the garage, next to the electric heater, does nothing to stem the cold that spreads from the shock.

What the hell is he?

A ghost? A spirit? A lone soul?

But then how is he able to interact with Jongin? Could anyone else actually see him, if he was solid in front of them?

Why is he stuck? Is something holding him back?

“Is it you?” Taemin whispers out loud, without realising it.

Jongin breaks out of his stupor. He stares at Taemin beside him, both of their backs to the heater. Taemin is looking straight ahead, eyes faraway and unseeing.

“What,” the word comes out hoarse and flat.

“Am I just unable to move on, or something? Is it because we never talked anything out, and I still had something left to say to you before I could move on?”

“But we already talked it out, didn’t we?”

“We did.” _So then what is it?_ It goes unspoken between them.

Five minutes pass in stilted silence. The heat is well and truly steeped into Taemin now, and he feels as real as ever.

“Isn’t it burning you?” Taemin asks, finally turning his head to look at Jongin. Jongin is still staring blankly at him, as if he isn’t sure that he’s real. Taemin sees it and momentarily rests a hand on Jongin’s cheek. Jongin blinks his acknowledgement and Taemin lets his hand drop.

“What?” Jongin suddenly says, seeming to only just have gained comprehension of Taemin’s question. “The heater? Not yet, but probably soon. Never put it this far up before.”

“What, the third bar?”

“Yeah. Except— uh, whatever.”

Taemin cocks his head to the side. Jongin watches the hairs still swept back loosely in the ponytail sweep across Taemin’s shoulder.

“No I mean that it’s not important, just that the only other time I put it up to the third was when I first came back from the hospital, but it’s just a detail like whatever.”

“Oh yeah,” Taemin says, nodding at the memory. “When I brought you up to your room. Huh. Who knew such an old thing could still have this much juice left in it.”

It’s such an ordinary turn in the conversation, that despite everything, Jongin smirks slightly. “I still think it’s magical, you know. My parents got married because of this old thing. It’s the good luck charm of the family,” he parrots. “It brings us everything we want.”

Taemin rolls his eyes. “Well, I found you here. Guess you wanted me that much, huh?”

It’s meant as a jest, but Jongin stares. “Holy shit, do you think?”

Taemin balks. “What? Are you serious?”

“Obviously. In case it escaped your notice, you turn _invisible_ at regular intervals now, so I don’t really think it makes sense to rule a magical electrical heater out of the equation, do you?” he asks with an eye roll.

“Well, we’ll just have to go with it then. Did you do anything specific? Do it again and get me my body back.”

“Jesus, it’s that simple? Well I suppose I—oh yeah! I exactly said ‘bring him back to me’ or something like that like three times. It sounds just like a spell from a fairy tale or something.” Jongin laughs at that.

“Not like we have a whole lot of options. Try it.”

“Okay.” Jongin takes a deep breath, and turns around in his seat so he can see the heater in front of him. He clears his throat, and brings up his hand so the palm lies flat on the surface of the bumpy metal surface. Taemin rolls his eyes at the theatrics but says nothing.

“Bring Taemin’s body back, bring Taemin’s body back, bring Taemin’s body back.”

They wait. Taemin steps away for a moment, and they watch in defeat as his fingers start to fade. He immediately returns to the heat.

“Okay, that didn’t work.”

The despair starts to come back as the minutes pass with them trying to think of something new.

But it seems hopeless. After a while, Taemin says finally what’s been on his mind since they got back from the hospital.

“Maybe being dead is an untouchable thing,” he says. “Maybe you already knew I had died that night, and you wished to bring me back just like now. From the dead. But you only got this half-baked version of me because it’s impossible to cheat death or something.”

Jongin is already shaking his head before Taemin finishes. “No,” he whispers. “I can bring you back.”

“I don’t think you can, Jongin. I think you’re holding me back. You can’t have me forever so just let me go, okay? You have to let me go.”

“No!” Jongin yells. “Why are you saying that? You’re not even real, you don’t get to choose.”

“What? What do you mean, how would you know that?”

Jongin’s eyes are flitting around the room, looking everywhere but at him again.

“I think I’ve well and truly lost it,” Jongin whispers.

Taemin rests a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you see?” Jongin says as he slowly draws his limbs closer and curls in on himself. “I know, deep down, that you would never do or say any of this. Everything that happened between us today. Just because I’m going insane doesn’t mean I’m not aware of it.”

“Jongin, you’re not—“

“ _Yes I am!_ ” Jongin screams. He leaps up and faces Taemin in what looks almost like a battle pose, arms out, like they’re about to tackle him. Taemin calmly rises and watches him, keeping a leg firmly against the heater. Although, looking at how Jongin is eyeing him now, with the bloodshot, tired eyes and pointy, nearly emaciated elbows that stick out from weeks of distress, he sees something he hadn’t even noticed earlier.

“I know, _I know_ this isn’t real. The real Taemin doesn’t love me. He wouldn’t have touched me like he did earlier today. It’s all wishful thinking. You’re the version of Taemin I always wished I had,” his voices breaks at the end.

“Jongin, listen. You’re just stressed from everything.”

“No—“

“No, _you_ listen. I know I’m real, and I really don’t have an explanation for that. But I also think that it has something to do with unfinished business. I really do think I’ll be able to die properly if you just leave me. The me that was alive—I _know_ he loved you. _I_ love you. How could you even doubt that? I care so much about you that I can’t even _die_ properly without making sure you’re going to be okay. Don’t do this to me, okay?”

Jongin doesn’t stop shaking his head, hands grasping again at his hair. “No, look. Look at how nice you’re being now. You’re agreeing with me. You _never_ used to agree with me on _anything_. It’s like you’ve become the Taemin I’ve always wanted, the one that loves me and returns my feelings and wants to be with me, wants to find a _way_ to be with me, even after death. And now you think I can just let you go? Just like that?”

When Jongin looks up, it’s to see the tears streaming silently down Taemin’s face. He looks so real now Jongin has to wonder whether the only thing he made up in his head is the ghost thing. “Jongin, please. _Please_. Just let me go. I can’t bare to see you like this. This version of Taemin that you want, that’s apparently _me_ , he wants you to let him go, okay? Even the perfect version. You won’t get over this otherwise. You have to move on. We built each other up, remember? How will you keep going if you’re buried under what’s left of me like this? You have to live so that none of this was for nothing. I love you so you have to live,” Taemin whispers.

“I do?” Jongin replies back with a hush. There’s a strange, crazed look in his eye.

Taemin nods carefully. “Yes, you do. Ask the heater.”

“The heater.”

Taemin cracks a smile through the tears. “That magical electric heater of yours. Put the fire up to the third bar like you said.”

“And then three times?”

“And then three times,” Taemin agrees. Jongin sighs, and walks over to Taemin. He takes his hands, and raises them up so he can plant a gentle kiss over the knuckles of each one.

“Please, Jongin. It’ll be alright. You’ll live just fine, especially knowing that I’ll watch over you always, okay?”

“You’ll watch over me?”

“I promise. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

“Okay,” Jongin finally relents. “What should I say?” he says this with a searching look at the heater, as though asking it for some help. He notes that the bar had somehow fallen down to second. Perhaps it fell down after the failed first wish.

“Tell it to let me go. You’ve let me go.”

Jongin smiles sadly, and opens his mouth for Taemin to see for the last time. Taemin puts a smile on because that’s how he wants Jongin to remember him. Smiling. It’ll all be over soon, he realises, and maybe finally he’ll be free—

“Let me go, let me go, let me go.”

At first, nothing happens. And then ice grips at Taemin’s insides, because he realises what Jongin’s done, that he didn’t say Taemin’s name, he said—

“Jongin, _no_ —“

But it’s too late. Jongin smiles at him, as the edges of him start to fade.

“How _could_ you, Jonginnie?” Taemin can hardly hear his own voice as it clogs up in his throat and threatens to fail. It comes out a horrible hoarse whisper, and despite it all, despite this terrible thing, he finds himself stepping away from the heater so he can fade too, so he won’t get left behind again—

“It’s just that I made a mistake, Taemin,” Jongin whispers. Taemin can see through him a little. The bookshelf with the old books that he used to read when Jongin first started to drift apart from him all those years ago start to replace the boy barely in front of him.

“But you had a whole _life_ ,” he screams. It’s like Jongin isn’t even hearing him. “There was so much. You were already drifting away from me, it was mutual. You would have gotten through this just fine but now it’s all wasted.”

There’s a cruel look that flits across Jongin’s fading face for only a split second before it disappears. It reminds Taemin of himself, before the crash, whenever he thought of Jongin and every confusing thing between them.

“You don’t know anything of how I feel. You haven’t for years.” His face relaxes into a soft smile. “But I would never abandon you, Taemin. Everything will be fine now.”

“You fucking _idiot_.” Taemin feels that rage from before come back, the remnants of his real self in this weird new not-body, even though the rest of him is cooling out and fading already. “You’re so young, this would have passed! Nothing lasts forever, but now you’ve just— _what about your parents?_ ”

Jongin says nothing. He doesn’t look like he heard anything that Taemin has said.

“You never had to prove anything, you idiot,” Taemin whispers. “I’ve always loved you. You’re my brother, no matter what. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

Jongin smiles finally, and Taemin can hardly see it anymore. His fading voice says the last thing Taemin hears.

“Wake up, Taemin.”

“You’re fucking shitting me,” are Taemin’s first words as he stirs awake into consciousness and sighs, sounds starting to bleed through his receptors.

A surprised nurse looks at him. “Hello, sir. You’ve finally woken up. How are you feeling?”

“Where’s Jongin?” he asks flatly. His vision is swirly but he’s identified immediately that he’s in a hospital, half because he’s pretty sure he’s been swimming in and out of consciousness for a while now, and half because he’s been expecting it.

“Please turn your head very slowly and carefully,” replies the nurse. “He’s right next to you.”

Taemin ignores the advice and tries to snap his neck to his left to where the nurse had indicated with a jut of her chin. He’s stopped by some sort of brace contraption and a sharp pain, which earns him a disapproving tut from the nurse.

But he can see him. Jongin lies still in the bed beside his own, tanned arm clearly visible over the sheet.

“He’s alright, just sleeping,” the nurse says. “You were a lot worse than him, but you’re both making it through just fine. I’ll call the doctor to tell her that you’ve woken up.”

“Okay,” Taemin whispers in vague disbelief. The nurse probably just thinks its disorientation and leaves him for a moment.

They’re in a busy ward, but all Taemin can see is Jongin.

He looks down at his own body after awhile, and it’s all solid, in one piece. There are bandages and splints everywhere, and once he wakes up a bit more, a dull pain starts to set in… everywhere.

“Jongin?” he whispers, bringing his attention back to the boy beside him to distract from the growing pain.

He doesn’t stir. Taemin sighs.

This is some fucking bullshit, is what it is.

_This was all just a fucking dream?_ Taemin scoffs to himself. _Just like in those cliched movies_. He wants to roll his eyes but everything hurts so he doesn’t risk it.

The bandages come off five weeks later. He’s so broken up that they don’t release him from the hospital until he’s completely healed, because it’s just too risky to move him even a little bit.

Jongin’s not much better, but Taemin sleeps through the whole thing and when he’s not, Jongin’s sleeping. Occasionally, they’re both awake at the same time and Jongin gives him a tired little _fuck, we made it_ smile each time their eyes meet. Taemin looks away every time. They let Jongin out two weeks before Taemin.

Whether it was a dream or not, things had changed.

The problems were real. All of it. Everything, _everything_ in that dream made a difference now.

Because it’s all true. Now he knows. Now he knows that they were both wrong, that they were both at fault, that it hurt _both_ of them. He had never stopped to think about it from Jongin’s perspective, but what sends chills down his spine is how _real_ it all felt. There’s no way he could have come up with that all on his own.

Or maybe, secretly, he’s known all along what the problem was.

He’s known that they were both wrong, that they both abandoned each other.

He’s known what Jongin’s been thinking, because he’s _always_ known Jongin, always known what he would have wanted from Taemin, even though Taemin has been ignoring it. And what can he do? He doesn’t know what he feels anymore. The dream had felt real.

Maybe he really did make it all up. Maybe it was meant to do nothing but to wake him up and make him realise what he had taken for granted, what he was satisfied with just letting out of his grasp.

When they let him go, he goes straight over to Jongin’s house. His parents complain, because they picked him up and want him to themselves for a bit, but Taemin hardly hears any of it. He’s going to see Jongin, and that’s that. He doesn’t want to confront him at the hospital, so he asks his parents not to tell Jongin’s family his discharge date.

He knocks on the door. Jongin’s dad answers.

When he sees Taemin, he wordlessly sweeps him up into a big, but gentle hug. “We missed you,” he says simply. Then he points up the stairs, where Jongin must be holed up in his room, and shuts the front door behind them.

Taemin sighs. “I missed you too, Mr Kim.”

But Jongin’s not there.

The garage.

Taemin takes the steps two at a time, which is stupid, because he could fall, and he was still quite delicate, but he can hardly think right now.

He’s in the garage, by the heater, like Taemin knew he would be. Really, he doesn’t know why he wasted his time knocking on the door when he knows Jongin wouldn’t be there. Probably wanted to announce his presence so the Kims don’t hassle him later when he goes back inside with Jongin later.

He’s sleeping, just like in the dream. But Taemin knows he’s real, because he just saw Jongin’s dad, who could touch him without his hand going through.

He contemplates not picking him up because he just got out of the hospital, and he’s a little paranoid about exerting himself so soon after breaking literally everything in his body. But Jongin is so thin and light after all this stress, that it hardly takes any effort at all to hoist him up bridal style into his arms.

It’s a little harder when they’re going up the stairs, and Taemin curses his sense of sentimentality because this is clearly more effort than it’s worth and he should just wake him up right now and demand Jongin walk his own damn self up to his room, but he can’t bear to look at Jongin’s face just yet, and he knows the heavy sleeper would never wake up short of being dropped down the stairs, and Taemin finds that he can’t think to do that. Although, it’s true, he might have just done so a couple of months ago.

But things are different now.

Taemin carefully settles Jongin down on his bed, and then walks back to close the door.

He does it unnecessarily carefully, and then finally turns back around. Jongin is sitting up and staring at him. The piece of shit, he was probably awake this whole time and just let Taemin—who had, by the way, _broken nearly every single bone in his body—_ carry him up to his room like a princess.

But Taemin lets it go, for now.

They stare at each other. Taemin cracks a smile.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Jongin replies.

The window is closed, but it’s like there’s a sudden wind that gusts through the room, through the space between them, because suddenly they aren’t on opposite sides of the room, but together, in each other’s arms, and Taemin’s eyes are wide open but he doesn’t really see anything—at one point, his eyes find the diary on the desk, the one he was sure he hadn’t seen before his dream—and he’s on his tiptoes so he can bury his face into Jongin’s neck. “I missed you,” Jongin says at the same time that Taemin inhales deeply and rasps, “I’ll never leave you again, Jonginnie.”

The end of his sentence lies empty between them for a moment, broken only by the calm hand stroking through Taemin’s hair.

“I know,” is the reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The title of this fic is from the song of the same name by Snow Patrol. Another thank you to my lovely recipient bluedreaming for this fic exchange, whose ideas and many prompts were what made this story be able to come to life. <3


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